Home > Home Front (The Long Road Home #5)(7)

Home Front (The Long Road Home #5)(7)
Author: Cat Johnson

“Come inside. Stew is on. I bet you’re hungry,” his mother said, proving his point.

“I am, actually.” He followed her toward the house and heard a chirp and a screech before a loud, “Screw you, Chad!”

Kyle’s lips twitched. “I see Pedro is still alive.”

His brother snorted. “That bird is going to outlive all of us.”

“We ever figure out who Chad is?” Kyle asked.

“No, but he must have done something pretty horrible to Pedro’s former owner,” Kurt said.

No kidding. Kyle’s grandmother had found the parrot drinking out of the birdbath in the back yard a dozen years ago. Now, over a decade later, the mysterious Chad was still getting cussed out by the bird.

It was nice to see some things didn’t change.

“No dinner for me, Grams. I don’t have time to eat. I’m changing my clothes then heading out.”

Kurt frowned at Scooter. “Seriously? You’re going out tonight? Kyle just got home.”

“Tonight’s the Luna Blue concert at school. I love you, bro, but I’m not missing that. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or, hey. You wanna come with? My friend has an extra ticket.”

Kyle let out a short laugh. “Thanks, but that’s okay.”

Attend an overcrowded concert venue at his little brother’s college, where everyone in the audience and probably the chick on the stage would be like a decade younger than him, while he was on crutches?

Nope. Not in this lifetime. He was too damn old, not to mention broken, for that shit.

“All right. Your loss. I gotta change clothes and pick up my friends. See you.” Scooter trotted away, leaving a void of relative calm in his wake.

Kyle took that opportunity to seek out the sanctuary of his old bedroom. He’d said he wanted to unpack. In reality, he needed some time away from the chaos that was his family.

He grabbed a quick shower and, though he’d never admit it to another soul, he was grateful for the plastic shower stool that must belong to his grandmother.

Showering in a glass stall while balancing on one foot wasn’t quite as difficult or as dangerous as the parachute jumps Scooter had mentioned, but it was enough to make Kyle consider taking a bath instead of a shower until he’d seen the stool.

Sad but true, he and his grandmother had more in common now that he was broken than they’d ever had. On that depressing thought, he pulled clean clothes out of his bag.

After the long couple of days of travel—not to mention the whole Gretchen fiasco—he was finally home and about to fill his belly with some good home cooking.

Things weren’t perfect. There was still his ankle to deal with, but he felt worlds better as he emptied the pockets of the pants he’d flown in.

Along with some loose change, a crumpled receipt and his boarding pass, he spotted the business card Blessing had given him at the USO back in Atlanta.

GAPS. Guardian Angel Protection Services.

He snorted out a short laugh. It was sweet of Blessing to try, but he couldn’t see himself calling these guys.

The reality was, he was too broken to do that kind of work right now. And when he healed, he’d either be good enough to go back to the team or he wouldn’t.

If the worst happened and he was medically discharged, he knew what would come next. What would be expected of him here at home. He’d be wearing a hard hat and a tool belt, like he had each weekend and every summer until he’d left for boot camp.

He crumpled the card into a ball along with the other stuff and glanced around his room, looking for the garbage pail that used to be next to the dresser, so he could toss the junk from his pocket.

It wasn’t there. He turned and saw it next to the bed. Just one of the changes his mother had made to his room.

It wasn’t like he was here a lot so he guessed he couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t in good conscience claim it as his room anymore.

He certainly couldn’t fault her for putting her exercise bike in there, even though it took up a ton of space.

And he wasn’t going to complain about the new flat screen TV on the wall. That was an improvement he could get on board with.

After making his way across the room, tripping on the exercise bike, and then tossing the card along with everything else in his hand into the trash, he hobbled back to his bag on the bed.

On top of the comforter where he’d tossed it next to the bag, his phone lit with an incoming call. Gretchen. He left the cell where it was, unanswered, and searched for a pair of clean socks.

Time for dinner with the family—which would no doubt distract him enough to forget about Gretchen, at least for a little while.

Grandma’s stew might be the best way to heal his soul. If only it could heal bones too.

 

 

five

 

“Jeez. Is it ever going to stop raining?” Luna stared out the water-streaked window of the town car as it pulled up to the medical center.

How long had the weather been like this? Days? More?

It felt like a solid week since the sun had shone, although who knew? She tended to lose track of days when on tour.

All she knew was she’d never seen so much mud in her life as she had here in upstate New York. They might get a lot of storms in Miami but at least they didn’t have this constant mud.

She remembered the tour bus passing a sign on the highway for a town named Mudville. That was a warning of things to come that she probably should have heeded.

As the rain became a solid sheet and she wondered how the driver could see the road, she spared a moment to hope there was a covered entrance to the building. And if not, she hoped that the driver had an umbrella in the car.

It wasn’t as if she could sprint for the door to avoid getting drenched.

Next to her in the back seat, Dan cocked up a brow. “Are you ever going to stop complaining?”

She shot him a glare. “I sprained my ankle. I’m a dancer as well as a singer, and I have a tour to finish, in case you forgot. I think I have a right to do a little bit of complaining.”

“It’s just twisted. Wrap it and you’ll be fine.” He waved off her concern with the flick of one hand.

“Oh, really? Great. Thanks for your diagnosis. Let me ask you something. How did you have time to go to medical school while you were on tour with me?” Besides Spanish and English, sarcasm was another language in which she was fluent.

“Don’t get pissed off at me. You’ll see when they tell you the same thing I did. I’m just trying to save you yet another pointless trip to a doctor. And besides, you’ve only got two more concerts up here then the tour is done and you have time off.”

Yeah. Six whole weeks before rehearsals started for her next tour. After working seven days a week for the past ten months, a month and a half break wasn’t very long. Especially if her injury turned out to be more serious than Doctor Dan, in his not so expert opinion, thought.

She hadn’t missed his other jab in his comment. His reference to her visit to the hospital in Manhattan. Was that only just over a week ago? It felt like an eternity as she waited for the test results.

That appointment with the cancer specialist had not been a pointless trip, as he’d said. No matter what the results turned out to be, she needed to know.

In his defense she still hadn’t told him why she’d made the trip. She’d been waiting to find out the results.

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